Biography
Joseph John Michael McDonald was twenty years old and from Oceanside, New York and rode from Montgomery and was arrested at the Jackson Trailways terminal on June 2, 1961 — one of the arrests recorded by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and preserved in the Civil Rights Digital Library. The catalog establishes the arrest, the participation, and the individually identified police photograph, but not the court disposition, any transfer to Parchman, or the physical release date; those fields are unresolved pending county-jail, court, or penitentiary records.
His birth year, about 1941, is derived from his reported age of twenty at arrest; no exact birth or death date has been located.
The jointly filed petition individually lists this rider and explicitly states that all petitioners entered pleas of not guilty for their Hinds County Court trials de novo. The previously blank plea field records that county-trial plea only; it does not change the later disposition or establish physical custody dates.
